Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Prairie Rose

Agnar was out again in the woods, and even though it was past midnight, and he hadn't come back and hadn't been home since she'd arrived back at the cabin after taking the boys to school, she told herself not to worry.

Of course, that's all she did.

She was two seconds away from dropping the book she'd been staring at steadily for the past three hours without reading and flying out the door again, when she heard the soft click as it opened and the even softer noise of it closing. The lock engaged and that couldn't be done quietly. The zipper of his jacket, undone slowly, echoed in the quiet.

She froze, listening for his footsteps. He didn't go into the kitchen or find himself something to eat off the counter. He went straight to the boys' room. Except, he didn't stop. That heavy tread, probably once done with confidence and power, now sounded more like a dragging, plodding shuffle. Her door was closed, and she held her breath while she imagined his hand on the knob. Twisting it. Coming inside.

Her mind flew back to that night in his bed where she'd pretended to be asleep.

The knock that came was so quiet that it was hardly a knock at all. Her mouth went so dry she could hardly swallow. "Come in," she choked.

Her body heated up to irrational levels as her heart started to pound. It didn't matter that she knew Agnar had pretty much promised that he would never touch her and would never want to touch her. Her body was a stupid thing when it came to him. It didn't get the memo about what had happened, and anything he'd ever said refused to banish the unruly flames that licked her physically whenever he was near.

She'd ground against him, soaked his leg with her wetness, she'd been in his arms when he'd pressed her dangerously against a wall. She'd bitten him, dreamed about him, ached for him, and just the day before, she'd straddled his lap. She'd been bold enough to touch him many times, but never like a lover.

The second he stepped into the room in his usual black ensemble, she swore she could feel the cold radiating off him. His soft dark lashes were starred from being frozen and melting when he entered the house. His skin was still flushed from the cold. His mahogany beard had droplets of moisture clinging to it and his hair was a little bit flat, like he'd actually worn a beanie.

His gray eyes were just as cold and flat as ever.

Agnar tugged his shirt off with a swift motion from behind his head. Watching his body move in the golden light from the single bulb in the stained-glass lamp on her nightstand only reinforced what a masterpiece he was. His gray eyes narrowed, arrowing in on her.

"Is this okay?" He glanced at the other side of the queen bed with longing.

In comparison to his home and probably most places, the room was humble. It was furnished with an antique wrought iron headboard and footboard, quilts that she and her sisters had learned to sew because it was a passion of their mom's, and she'd shared it with anyone who wanted to learn. Out of all of them, shockingly, Rome had been best at it, but when he was almost finished, he'd torn his quilt top apart over the tiniest mistake. Literally obliterated it beyond fixing, though their mom had tried her darned best for days to put it back together. She had two nightstands, one tall dresser, and a rag rug in the middle of the floor. They were proud to make some of their furniture locally, from the trees that grew on their land. Kieran had a passion for antiques and so much of their cabins were filled with his finds.

She'd always thought he was so brave, going out there into the world. She'd joined him a few times over the years, and he'd laughed when she admitted one day as they drove home with a full load in the back of an eight-foot truck box, that she'd thought he was brave for going out antiquing.

Agnar bent and reached for his shirt off the floor.

"Yes," she answered. She scrambled to peel back the quilt on the other side of the bed. "I don't like you sleeping on the floor. Of course, it's okay that you sleep here."

He ran a hand over his beard. It had grown long and he'd stopped trimming it, so it was a bit unkempt. It didn't look bad on him at all. She'd thought her mouth was dry before, but it was nothing in comparison to how her saliva vanished entirely when he stripped off his black fatigues and peeled his socks away and stood only in his boxers.

This was so different from pretending to be asleep in the pitch black of his bedroom. She studied him in the full light. His sheer size hit her all over again. He picked his clothes up off the floor, folding them and setting them neatly on top of the dresser at the far side of the room. Her mate never spoke to her in poetry, and she doubted he had any in his steel hard soul, but his body was poetry. The way he walked was an artform.

Despite the weight he'd lost, he was still heavily muscled. He had no tattoos that she could see, and she could see nearly all of him. She bit down on her bottom lip as she watched the graceful motions that had become instinct for him with all that hard training over the years. No tattoos, but the scars stood out, some faded and some stark, some jagged and others small. They graced his body, innumerable like the stars in the sky.

Agnar wasn't the kind of man a person saw on billboards or in magazines. He'd never grace the cover of a romance novel and he didn't resemble anyone she'd ever watched in any movie. She'd thought of him as a god, all cold, hard marble, but he was real. She'd felt the cold of the outside radiating off his clothes when he'd stepped into her room, but now she felt the warmth of him flood the small space.

He was a real man, with more than a sprinkling of hair across his broad chest and down his carved-out abs. He looked like a warrior, but she could see the wolf mirrored in him as well. If she licked and touched and sucked and explored him, would he respond? This man with the kind of body that was built to do one thing and one thing well, kill.

Agnar had blood on his hands. He'd killed men, wolves. He'd killed their own kind, which to her was unfathomable before she'd met him or Castor or knew anything about their pack. He'd spilled blood and he'd watched it be spilled. He was hard and cold before, and now he'd all but given up. He'd promised not to love her the way he clearly hadn't loved his first mate and even his sons knew it. He'd demanded that she reject him.

This was her mate and a new fire kindled in her soul.

She patted the bed beside her then turned out the lamp and slid down under the covers.

She couldn't stop thinking about Agnar turning to her and letting her touch him. She had to clench her thighs together and she felt how wet her cotton pajama bottoms were when she thought about him touching her with hands he felt were now useless. Her nipples nearly cut through her thin cotton t-shirt when she thought about him unleashing himself on her and fucking her with nothing short of the power of an animal.

She was afraid he would smell her desire when he got into bed beside her, but if he did, he said nothing. The bed dipped and then did more than dip. The heat of him and the dark scent of male, made something tighten in her belly.

She stayed on her back and so did he. She knew he wasn't asleep, even when the silence stretched on and on, ticking past an hour. How could either of them sleep when the narrow space between them and all the room, probably all the world, was charged with tension?

"Agnar?" she whispered, even though she wanted to stay quiet.

"Hmm?" More a grunt than an actual response.

"Is this okay?" She echoed his earlier question.

"You said you never liked me sleeping on the floor, but I know you never liked any of it. You asked me not to go to the woods alone." Her throat closed at his ragged tone. "Today was the last time."

She twisted on her side and so did he, facing away from her. She sensed that giving her his back was a defense mechanism, but maybe it showed more trust than anything. The back was a vulnerable spot.

She lifted her hand to reach out to him, but stopped herself. All she wanted to do was press herself up against the hard planes of him. She wanted to pull him into a tight hug or rub his back, but after all he'd been through—his entire life and not just lately—anything she might do was going to mean nothing. It was going to fix nothing. It might even drive him away.

"Briar May came by with Sadie," she said, unable to stop the words the same way she was to stop herself from touching him. "You weren't home when I got back from taking the boys to school. I knew you were out in the woods, and I know what I said, but I thought you needed privacy more than you needed me there talking at you. She told me how she stuck her foot in it this morning with you, but she wouldn't say anything else. She did tell me to tell you that she's sorry if it was too much. I can only imagine. I can't believe she did that. Well, on the other hand, I kind of can. We're both pretty quiet and dutiful as the oldest daughters, but we're also best friends."

Her pulse ripped at her neck while she waited for what he would say.

"I pushed her to the brink, no doubt."

She edged closer, so her breath fanned against his skin. "Agnar, that's fine. No one's mad, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You didn't look well this morning. I took the boys to my parents so they could see them before school. They really like my mom and dad, although I don't know anyone who doesn't. I knew they wouldn't ask me anything and I needed that. I know you hate the boys seeing you… not at your best."

His response was curt and clipped. "I had trouble with my stomach. It was nothing, but thank you."

"I'm such an idiot. I have no idea why I fed you all of that after you haven't been eating. I can see how much weight you've lost. I knew you hadn't been taking in more than scraps."

"That had nothing to do with it."

She couldn't let the silence go on. She had something she desperately wanted to tell him, but wasn't sure it was the right time. He was there, with her, and not on the floor. That meant something. He'd promised not to go into the woods by himself again. She didn't want to push him too hard and drive him away just when he was there with her at all.

The words stayed locked inside her, burning her bones to the marrow.

Agnar turned and stared at her, those gray eyes biting through the dark. The dark wasn't impenetrable, not like his house at all. The light from the hall crept under the door and through the gaps in the lightweight curtains at the windows she could see glow from lights on in her siblings' cabins down the row.

He shocked her by running the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. "I can tell you're bursting with something else. You might as well say it."

She wanted to thrust herself against his thumb, take it into her mouth and bite it, suck it, force it into his mouth so he could taste her on himself. She swallowed hard instead as her body grew steadily warmer, entering fevered territory. "I asked Briar May this morning who I should call if I needed someone to make me something specialized and medical out of metal or plastic. It was more just a passing thought, asking her, but she suggested my brother. I called him, and as far as knowing people goes, he's living out there, without a pack, and I can't imagine all the connections he's forced to have."

"Forced?"

"I'm sure he'd rather be here."

Understanding passed over his face as he shifted on the pillow, tucking his arm underneath it to prop himself up. "This is the banished brother."

"How do you know that?" she asked sharply.

"Briar May said something about him this morning."

Right. That made sense. Briar May refused to tell her what she'd said, and knowing her, that meant that she'd said a whole lot. "Rome. Yes. He's—"

"I know. I know he was the one."

She frowned and sucked in a breath. "You'd hardly want to go there, then, even though he said he knows someone who can make anything. A guy he works with at the garage. Never mind. I'll find someone else."

His lips pursed. "You wanted to go there?"

"I want to go together. I know it's dangerous going out in the world and taking the boys is a risk, but I know my brother is raising a child. I've never met her and it's a sad story, but Briar May says that Rome is trying to change. He was always so rough around the edges. Like he was only half here with us and always half somewhere else. He liked to be an asshole just for the sake of it. It was like he lost his whole self when his mate was killed. He went crazy and destroyed everyone responsible. It's unheard of here, to have blood on your hands like that. My father had no choice but to banish him. Now he's in the city, raising his mate's daughter that she never told him about because her grandma was looking after her, but she passed. He's trying to be better for her sake. He works at a garage, he's part owner, and the guys there are pretty rough around the edges, but they're friends and a sort of pack. Wolves, living in the city. I guess it's no different than how other shifters and vampires and witches often choose society as a smokescreen. Although, I feel like it's the most unnatural for wolves. We were made to have others. We should have family."

She thought he'd turned away from her or thrust himself straight out of bed to be away from her after she'd discussed him and acted behind his back. He just stared at her, holding her gaze so long that she had trouble breathing. "If you want to go, I'll take you."

She couldn't just stay there in bed. She had too much wild energy. Agnar was gone all day. She knew he hadn't eaten anything. She twisted away and got out of bed. He acted like he was going to follow, but she put out a hand. "You have to be starving. You were out all day. Let me get you something."

"I'm not. Prairie Rose, it's fine. Stop. Please."

"It's no trouble." She took her soft fluffy robe down from the hanger on the back of the door and slipped into it. "Just stay there. I'll be back in five minutes."

She was efficient in the kitchen despite her trembling muscles, the ache all over her body, and the heat consuming her. She had to do something. and it was either make a fool of herself back there or care for Agnar this way, by feeding him.

She nearly dropped the plate in the bedroom when she turned the lamp back on and he sat up, his hair and beard even more disheveled, but deliciously.

She'd brought a plate of meat and cheese, pickles and olives, and two buns from the batch her mom gave her that morning, baked fresh. She set the plate down on the bed and sat on the edge. She watched Agnar's eyes devour the food with more life than he'd shown for anything in a long time, but he compiled a sandwich with agonizing slowness.

There was something wrong with her for sure because she felt tingles all over her body watching him stick an olive in his mouth and chew. It was a good thing he didn't make any noise as he ate, not a single growl of pleasure, or she would have combusted on the spot.

"Can I tell you about the boys' school?"

Agnar stopped chewing. He stared hard at the plate, but then he nodded.

Prairie Rose slowly unclenched her fingers where her nails had bit crescents into her palm. "It's just a big log cabin with an obstacle course behind it, and they have a huge field with trees in the distance. It's at the heart of the pack lands. You would never know it was there if you were an outsider."

"I was thinking about what they asked. About the training."

She found his eyes on her when her head jerked up. "They know you love them, and they know you need time. We had a discussion about that this morning, and no one had hurt feelings. They were confused, but they're not like regular kids. They know more about the world than some adults. They understand how pain and death change a person."

He looked pained, but he finished eating. She let him have that quiet and was relieved when he finished everything. "I didn't know they knew." He turned and set the plate on the nightstand on his side. "About their mother, what she told them." He turned back around to give her the honor of looking her in the eye. She saw how anguished he was. "Fuck, this isn't a conversation I should be having with you."

"I'm not offended. You were mated before. That doesn't change how I feel."

Fuck. Why had she just said that? She hadn't meant for anything like that to slip out. They weren't supposed to talk about feelings. He'd promised her there'd be none on his end and she'd promised him everything on hers but bringing it up now felt like breaking some kind of truce.

"It was arranged. Many matches in my pack are—were." She thought he was going to let it go, but of course he wasn't and of course he asked her with an expressionless dead face. "What… do you feel?"

The urge to lie and protect herself was sharp. Survival instinct was base and strong, and she ignored it with difficulty. He needed to hear this. So what if she was humiliated in the process? He was barely holding on. If he let go, she'd drag him back even if her nails pierced right through him as she struggled to keep him from falling into that abyss. "That this is right. That you're mine. That I'm yours. That we were picked out for each other when we needed each other most. That Levi and Blake are part of my family now and I would do anything to protect them."

For the first time ever, she saw how his eyes could come alive. They weren't just gray. There were glowing flecks in them, a pale light blue that rippled around his pupils. "That's your art. Like historians have their books or a playwright has his actors, painters have their canvas, this is what you excel at."

"What?" Her breathing was wrong. Her heart was two steps away from tripping over itself and going summersaulting to the floor. She didn't understand what he was talking about, but the way he looked at her, his jaw tight and nostrils slightly flared in intensity.

"Caring. The way you love people. I saw it this morning when I stepped out and watched you and the boys looking at that sunrise. They're not yours, you've only known them a few weeks. Yet, I know you'd truly die for them. You'd do anything to make them happy. Fuck, you'd do anything to make me happy, and that's an impossible fucking task. You're stubborn. You won't stop trying. Your goodness is your art. This is where you thrive. Where most others would fail and fail willingly. Where most have no idea where to even start." His jaw ticked, he clenched it so hard. "Just give me two weeks."

"Two weeks?"

"Two weeks and I'll take you wherever you want to go."

She ached so fiercely she nearly cried out. "There's no time limit. You can take as long as you need."

He studied her like it was his punishment to do so. Like she'd turn him to stone. Instead of looking away, he gave her all that naked emotion, everything he'd sworn he wasn't capable of feeling. Everything he should have cut out. He gave her his soul in that instant. It was too much. She put her hand on his shoulder and curled her fingers over hot skin, muscle, scars.

He dropped his head, his chin tucked tight to his chest. "I was never afraid of the outside world, but now truly I know that humans are not the greatest evil or threat out there. Why would they want to wipe out the other when we're perfectly capable of doing that job to ourselves? That night, we walked, and we hid. Some of the children were so traumatized they couldn't shift. Some of us, too injured. We walked through our land and enemy land and then I had to go to a motel in the middle of nowhere while the others hid, shower and clean up. I had no cash or ID on me, but it was easy enough to get into the city while they stayed locked in that motel room. I remembered all my credit card numbers and promised the cab driver a big tip if he would wait for me at the bank. I told the clerk I'd been attacked, and they'd stolen my wallet and everything on me, Given my appearance at the time, it was a plausible story. They gave me a new card after verifying me through their endless identity questions and I was able to withdraw enough cash to get two rentals to get us here. If Alexander had wanted us dead, we would have been. No, he wanted us alive, to live with the memory of this day for the rest of our lives. It wasn't a warning. It was a punishment for having good intentions."

"You need to hear it again." She tilted his chin up, and this time, she couldn't keep the tears locked inside. Not when he still looked so ruined. "The cruelty of others is not and will never be your fault. No one here hates you. No one. You can't let this define you. You can't let this be the only thing you are."

He let out a ragged sigh. She remembered thinking his body was like a poem, even if his soul had no romance in it, but now he was more like a wordless lament torn from a shattered soul, sent straight up into the stars. "I want to be a good man for my sons. I want to be more than just the person who teaches them how to survive and how to kill, but do I know anything more than that?"

"Yes!" Prairie Rose exclaimed. His shoulders sagged slightly forward, like he needed that assurance so badly despite his avowal never to need anything at all. "You can and you will." His hand came up and draped over hers. She felt the few fingers that refused to work properly. They stayed in the air, but his palm was large enough to cover hers anyway. "I think you need to sleep. How many weeks has it been since you allowed yourself any rest? I have herbs to help with that. Brooke Wind taught us all about that so we could grow and dry our own for healing when needed. I know you don't want them and wouldn't want anyone to know, but it's just me here. You're safe in this cabin. In this pack. Safe enough to rest for a few hours. I promise."

She was sure he'd say no, but when he dipped his head like he'd been defeated, her chest almost collapsed.

She made the herbs for him in the kitchen, mixing them into hot water to make an infusion. She strained them out after. She found him still sitting up, his head bowed, unconsciously giving her the back of his neck. That's where she put her hand. She draped her palm over that vulnerable space, thrusting her palm beneath his surprisingly soft hair. His neck was soft too, with little downy hairs because he didn't just shave the sides, he must shave the back of his head beneath the long hair that usually fell to cover it.

She held him tightly there while she brought the cup to his lips. He let her stroke his neck a few times, let himself have that comfort, before he took the cup and drained it in one long pull. He thrust the cup back into her fingers and then he reached up behind his neck. She thought he'd throw her hand off, but he pressed down hard on it instead. His body shook while he breathed in and out.

He kept breathing and she stayed there, her whole body tensed, until she felt the way his body started to slacken as the herbs worked.

Brooke Wind didn't mess around with what she gave them or what she'd shown them. They relied on the power of plants for healing most times, as far as that would take them before they needed the supplies she somehow procured from hospitals or some doctor who sold them black market style. Maybe she had an actual card to get her into some doctors only store where she bought it or ordered it. Prairie Rose had no idea and she'd never even thought to ask Brooke or Zora.

Agnar said nothing as he repositioned himself, shifting back down to the pillows. She moved away to let him get comfortable. She slipped in beside him, onto her side of a bed she'd never in her life shared. She turned off the lamp and waited.

It was only a few more minutes before she could tell that he was asleep. The silence in the room shifted and the tension eased just a little. The agony that Agnar cloaked himself in seemed to dissipate like a storm cloud finally passing over.

He was on his back, blissfully asleep, where hopefully he'd have no dreams or nightmares. Getting close to him felt wrong because she couldn't ask. She settled for moving to her side and resting her hand on his, under the blankets.

It felt like just enough to let him know that she was there.